January 2010 in Pictures
The third article in the series of pictures from the past month. I wasn’t able to expand my roaming range in January; I am still more or less bound by the city-bounds of my hometown Ostend. Nothing spectacular happened in January. We had two cold spells with frost and snow, making it impossible for me to go out with my bike, and a lot of cloudy days without good photo opportunities.
Red-breasted Merganser
The pictures of this month contain a lot more bird photos than the previous months. You have been warned. As for the photo on the right; the punk look comes natural to the Red-breasted Merganser.
When we moved into this house, some 35 years ago and started feeding the birds in the garden during winter, only 3 species were attracted by a fat ball: Great Tits, Blue Tits and Greenfinches. A decade or more later House Sparrows and Starlings had acquired a taste for the fat balls too. This winter, for the very first time, I also saw a Blackbird and a Robin on the fat balls. I was able to catch the Robin in the act of feeding off the fat ball. It wasn’t easy, hiding behind a plant in the kitchen, taking the shot through the kitchen window. Interspecies copycat behavior among birds in a winter garden. Sounds like a good title for another article.
All photos were taken with my Canon Powershot S3 IS. For the long distance shots I used the Canon Teleconverter TC-DC58B 1.5x with the Conversion Lens Adapter LA-DC58E.
I would love to have better equipment, like the Canon EOS 50D with the Canon EF 500/4.0 L USM IS lens and maybe even an additional 1.5x or 2x converter. Alas, that is way over my budget and I wouldn’t feel comfortable biking around, carrying a backpack stuffed with over 5 kg of camera equipment worth over 6000 EURO. But I can always dream.
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| Buying a camera doesn’t make you a photographer. It makes you a camera owner. |
